The educationally challenged American school district / Evans Clinchy -- A journey toward autonomy / Linda Nathan and Larry Myatt -- Smarter charters? : creating Boston's pilot schools / Robert Pearlman -- The state's role in shaping a progressive vision of public education / Dan French -- A day in the life of a teacher in a small school / Meredith Gavrin -- Why wasn't I taught this way? / Ellalinda Rustique-Forrester -- The transformation of one large urban high school : the Julia Richman education complex / Ann Cook -- Birthing new visions schools / Beth Lief -- School reform : a system's approach / Judith A. Rizzo -- The role of a union in school-system reform / David Sherman -- Inching toward reform in New York City : the coalition campus schools project / Linda Darling-Hammond ... [et al.] -- Can the odds be changed? : what it will take to make small schools ordinary practice / Deborah Meier -- Contexts of productive learning, governance, charter schools, pilot schools, the creation of settings, and the wailing wall / Seymour Sarason -- The new American school district / Evans Clinchy.

Summary

In this timely volume, acclaimed educational scholars and experts who share a critical view of the standards and testing movement, explore the major reform issues currently facing American educational institutions. The collective wisdom they provide is sound and never strays far from a consideration for the difficulty of implementing educational reforms in the face of structural and ideological limitations. Aspects of school reform such as the role states play, the results of reform efforts in the urban enclaves of New York and Boston, and the position of unions in school system reform, represent just some of the comprehensive analyses presented here. Particular attention is given to the challenges faced by new, smaller, and more independent schools. This volume is laden with balanced advice for anyone seeking to understand or inspire educational reform.

Choice Review

This, the second in a trilogy of edited books, explores some of the major educational reform issues facing the American system of public education. The current standards and testing movement, along with other major reform issues, are reviewed and discussed by 17 education scholars and experts. Editor Clinchy alerts the reader that most of the chapters have appeared in Phi Delta Kappan as part of special editorial sections or as individual titles. The assembled authors deal in considerable detail with the creation of smaller schools in New York City and Boston. Each author contributes to the ongoing development of the small, autonomous schools' decentralization movement rather than the Nation at Risk agenda with its "world class" academic standards. They argue for the expansion of small schools based on the intellectual expectations and curricular standards that are developed by the staffs and parent bodies of the individual schools. The New Visions schools in New York are cited as examples of schools where a rigorous academic curriculum can yield expected results along with high standards. Along with the seven characteristics they believe the revamped school system should possess, the authors have supplied sources of further information, networking, and technical assistance. Recommended at all levels. G. E. Pawlas University of Central Florida